Finding the faith
After a decade of distrust of churches, religious leaders say, students are flocking back to organized religions. Some attribute the trend to a fear of nuclear war, others to
a need to fill a spiritual void. Most are certain of one thing, however. The student swing coincides with a nationwide search for truth. See story, page 6.
Cloudy
High, low 70s. mid-50s Details on page 3.
The University Daily
KANSAN
Vol. 95, No. 29 (USPS 650-640)
Thursday, October 4, 1984
Petition on GLSOK money to get second chance
By JOHN HANNA Staff Reporter
A petition calling for a campus election on Student Senate financing of Gay and Lesbian Services of Kansas should not be judged on whether its intent is discriminatory, the Student Senate Executive Committee suggested yesterday.
A decision on the validity of the petition now is in the hands of the committee that last week recommended that the Senate declare it invalid.
StudEx yesterday asked the Senate Elections Committee to reconsider its earlier decision That committee meets at 8 p.m. in the Oread Room of the Kansas Union
Both actions were approved in a unanimous voice vote.
STUDEN MSO SUGGESTED that the committee look only at the wording of the petition and at the validity of the signatures on it, and that it not judge whether the petition is discriminatory.
But members of StudEx, the executive committee of the Senate, said yesterday that the Senate did not have the right to decide on the petition.
In their recommendation to the Senate last week, members of the Elections Committee called the petition and its intent discriminatory.
Its voting members are the student body president and vice president, the chairmen of the Senate's five permanent committees and the three student reports, the chairmen of the Student Affairs Committee.
"It's a terrible precedent for Student Senate to have the authority to pass on a petition from someone who disagrees with
Senate," said Chris Coffelt, StudEx chair-
woman
STUDEN HAS THE power to place legislation in committees and on the Senate floor.
Jon Gelfrich, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said, "Student Senate should not have the right to question the right of the student body to question the Senate."
Steve Imber, Lawrence senior, circulated the petition in the spring after the Senate voted to allocate $505 to GLSOK. To be valid, a petition for an election must contain the signatures of 10 percent of the student body.
Imber needed about 2,100 signatures, and he collected more than 2,500.
MEMBERS OF THE Elections Committee have tried to determine whether the signatures are valid, but they have not been able to obtain a list of students enrolled in the spring from administrators, said Thom Davidson, the committee chairman.
Imber said yesterday that he thought GLSOK could be self-supporting and that the issue was financial, not moral.
Davidson said he did not know how long validation of the signatures might take. The committee members must check names as well as their signature numbers for signers of the petition.
"We are at the point where we are running out of time," he said.
Imber also has been involved in the sale of "Fagbusters" T-shirts, which appeared on campus last month. He sold one on Sept. 24 to a Kansan staff member who neither stated nor denied any affiliation with the newspaper.
Imber yesterday praised the decision.
"It puts the decision in the right body to judge the petition on legitimate terms," he said.
But Ruth Lichtwardt, GLSOK president,
said the decision came as a surprise.
"I'm very disappointed," she said "Apparently this thing is going to drag out a lot longer than I had thought."
Some material for this story was provided by reporter Lauretta Schultz.
Beirut attack preventable, officials say
By United Press International
WASHINGTON — U.S. intelligence gave adequate warning that the Sept. 20 Beirut bombing could occur, a House committee said yesterday, concluding there was "no logical explanation" for effective security not being in place.
The House Intelligence Committee said officials both in Beirut and Washington "should have been on full alert and should have taken every precaution possible" before the truck-bomb attack on the U.S. embassy annex, which left three Americans dead.
House Speaker Thomas P. O'Neill asked the committee to evaluate the performance of the intelligence community in connection with the incident.
Although the threat was "never specific as to time or place... it provided adequate warning that attacks might occur," the committee said.
NOTING THE TWO earlier bombings of U.S. outposts in the Lebanese capital, which killed more than 250 Americans, the committee said "credible" reports that a militant Muslim group had threatened it would strike another American target were duly passed on to authorities in Washington.
Overall, it concluded, "Intelligence performance on the threat related to the bombing was adequate.
"It is the view of the committee that the probability of another vehicular bomb attack was so unambiguous that there is no logical explanation for the lack of effective security countermeasures at the East Berut annex to thwart an attack." The six-page report
THE STATE DEPARTMENT said it was still investigating the bombing and "will take full account of the issues raised by the committee."
"The decision to move most of our
See SECURITY, p. 5, col. 3
Sean Debardelaben, Chicago freshman, models his shaved head advertising his preference in the National League penant race. Debardelaben, who shaved his head on a bet from
Chris Magerl/KANSAN
a friend, said he planned to keep the letters intact as long as the Chicago Cubs were in post-season play. He said his parents didn't know yet about his new haircut.
KU experiments blast into space with shuttle
Bv DAN HOWELL
Staff Reporter
Three radar-imaging experiments designed at the University of Kansas will blast into orbit tomorrow aboard the space shuttle Challenger, the director of the Remote Sensing Laboratory said yesterday.
ruenard Moore, the director, said the goal of each experiment was to increase knowledge about the reliability of radar measurements taken in space.
"It's working to help everybody else get good data," he said.
Moore, Black and Veatch distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering, is co-director of two of the experiments. The third is led by Fawwz Ulaby, who was the laboratory's director in 1978 as this summer at the University of Michigan.
KU RESEARCHIERS hold about $650,000 in grants from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Flight commander Robert Crippen, preparing for a record fourth shuttle flight, practiced touch-and go landings at Kennedy Space Center's three-mile runway using a
Cape Canalerva, Fla., at 6:03 a.m. if the countdown continues smoothly. The countdown began early yesterday as a record crew prepares for its eight day flight.
Challenger will leave its launch pad at
If the mission goes as planned, he will make only the second shuttle landing at Kennedy Space Center. NASA officials have
THE SHUTTLE MISSION will record several firsts, including the first spacewalk by an American woman, Kathryn Sullivan. Sullivan and Sally Ride, who will make her second flight, will become the first two American women on one space mission.
rerouted some landings planned for Florida to Edwards Air Force Base in California because of bad weather.
Students receive education through the mail
See SHUTTLE, p. 5, col. 3.
BY JULIE COMINE
The crew also includes Marc Garneau, the first Canadian on a space flight, who will
Staff Reporter
An Emporia housewife finishes her sociology homework, neatly stuffs the assignment into a legal-size envelope and mails it to the University of Kansas.
She can't afford to attend college full time, but continues her education by corre spondence study.
Like many students enrolled in KU's independent study program, the housewife can earn college credit without setting foot on campus.
The independent study program, one of 100 offered throughout the country, is the only correspondence program in Kansas, said Nancy Colver, the program director.
*Independent study students come in all sizes, shapes, ages and locations.* she said. The reasons for taking an independent study are as varied as the classes themselves.
THIS SEMESTER, 1.663 students are taking independent study classes, up about 8 percent from last year's enrollment of 1.541 students. About 30 percent of the correspondence students also take classes on campus, she said
some people take a class by correspondence because work and family routines prevent them from attending classes during the day.
Some students want to pick up extra creeds during the summer, but don't want to
Others turn to independent study because they have had trouble during regular enrollment getting into classes they need to graduate.
"AND MANY STUDENTS simply prefer the correspondence mode of learning." Colyer said. "They can't stand sitting in a lecture hall packed with 200 people. They'd
more proffer a personal, one to one relationship with an independent study instructor
Although many enrollees are nontraditional students who do not work toward degrees and take classes only for personal enrichment, Colver said, most independent study students are committed to their college education.
"The majority definitely have their eye on a deeerce," she said.
Independent study students may enroll at any time during the year in more than 100 courses, ranging from English 101 and
See STUDY, p. 5, col. 1
T-shirt issue too clouded, Imber says
BY LAURETTA SCHULTZ
Staff Reporter
Staff Reporter
Steve Imber, purveyor of "Fagbusters" T-shirts and sponsor of a petition calling for a vote on student financing of Gay and Lesbian Services of Kansas, said last night that those two activities never should have been lumped into one issue.
Imber, Lawrence senior, said that he thought those issues — his sale of the T-shirts and his work on a petition regarding Student Senate financing of GLSOK — were getting complicated and confused by an abundance of publicity.
Imber's comments last night were the first time he had spoken publicly about the T-shirts. Imber's connection to the shirts was revealed last week after he sold one to a Kansan staff member who neither stated nor denied any affiliation with the newspaper.
"IT'S NOT FAIR to tie the T-shirts, which were sold this last month, to a petition I started six months ago," said Imber. "OK, so my personal prejudice has been shown. But those T-shirts show only one person's prejudice, what about the other 2,000 or so people who signed that petition?"
When the shirts first appeared on campus last month, Imber said he was not connected to any sports team.
Imber said that he thought he had been treated unfairly by the Kansas
"I really didn't like the article that started out talking about the Student Senate discussing a nuclear reactor, moved on to the announcement of vandalism on someone's car and ended up talking about the shirts." Imber said. "Everyone who read that article thought of me tampering with that car, and I didn't."
"I REALLY THINK that if anyone in GLSOK had a pet hamster die, I'd be blamed," said Imber.
Imber also said that his fraternity, Acacia, was in no way involved in the petition or the court.
"I live here, that's it," he said. "There was no house money involved, it was mine. All of the responsibility for the T-shirts falls on me."
Imber also offered his opinions to those who complained about the sale of the T-shirts, which depict a wrist-wristed ghost inside a circle with a slash through it. The word "Fagbusters," a take-off on the word "guests," ghostbusters, is printed above the picture.
The "Fagbuster" T-shirts were meant as a parody on "Wear Blue Jeans if You're Gay Day," sponsored annually by GLSOK, Imber said.
"The T-shirts were just a pardon, a joke," he said. "No one who bought them wanted to go out and punch a gay person. They just told them because they thought they were funny."
"PEOPLE THINK MY shirts are offensive," he said. "Well, I think flying a plane over Memorial Stadium during a graduation is inviting people to a gay舞 dance is offensive."
Imber's connection with the T-shirts created an unfair controversy involving the
"I felt like the Student Senate Elections Committee was saying 'OK, Steve Imbere has sold these T-shirts, he's shown personal prejudice, let's kill his petition," he said.
Imer said that he started writing the petition on GLOSOK's financing in the spring.
"I didn't even care about GLSOK for a long time," he said. "It came to my attention when I read in the paper that the Senate Finance Committee was cutting GLSOK's
See IMBER, p. 5, col. 5